Hi,

I've got a spacecraft model and want to assign the corresponding textures, like left wing, right wing, body, etc. I've already watched this Tutorial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1R_fuaZCLI&t=317s) on how to texture easy things in Houdini but what if I've got multiple textures, including specular-, normal- and reflectivity maps. How to assing them to a single object.

I know this is kind of a noob question, but i've only found tuts on how to apply one texture per object.
Thanks in advance

You have to use groups to separate parts, then assign a material node…

you can create image layers, too
on the material textures tab, you can assign textures.

hope you understand the fusel wusel video

if you like to go deeper: unlock a material and dive in to see what's going on there.

Textures are associated with materials, not with objects.

The order is texture -> material -> object or part

Look for a tutorial on lookdev (look development) or material creation in houdini. If you use something like the principled shader, it might be as simple as putting the texture path in the right slot of the material. The textures tab has a long list of fields that accept paths for texturing each aspect of the material.

Hey thanks for the Explanation.
To use Groups came into my mind too, but as this is a very tedious workflow, were I easily end up having dozens of materials, I hoped there would be a better solution.

Besides that: what is the best texture Format for houdini? The model had .dds-textures which I converted to tif; but is there a prefered texture type which Houdini will benefit from?

SiRpRoHxO
(…) I hoped there would be a better solution.

You can specify texture as a geometry primitive http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/shade/overrides.html [www.sidefx.com] which will overwrite material parameter, so that Mantra will use a single shader with multiply textures. Super powerful yet tedious for simple task might be Material Stylesheet:
http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/shade/stylesheets.html [www.sidefx.com]

SiRpRoHxO
Besides that: what is the best texture Format for houdini? The model had .dds-textures which I converted to tif; but is there a prefered texture type which Houdini will benefit from?

.RAT. Always use Rat file.
http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/shade/convert.html [www.sidefx.com]

While talking with a friend…
this came up

use groupnames to assign texture names.
unfortunatly not visible in ogl preview,
maybe needs ogl texture path, too.
can be used for “shop_materialpath”, too.

Thanks to symek
“…better” uses material overrides, then the texture is visible in preview :-)

Hey thanks for the answer. I'll try this material override thing next time, it seems pretty handy.
For now I assigned the texture via the prim groups the model gave me. In viewport this looks not quite right yet, as it seems shiny and black from certain angles, but the render seems to work. Is this just a viewport error or am I doing something wrong?
Which texture type is the right one in the uvtexture node? For now I set this to modify source, and it seems to work, and most other Options yielded to strange results, but I dont know excatly what I'm doing here.

I tried to convert all my textures to the .rat-Format but I had no luck yet. I tried this Batch Thing, so I wouldn't have to convert them manually. I searched the help files and the Forum, but all I got was some strange Code which I wasn't able to execute; like:


or


I tried several Things here, like changing the path to iconvert, execute the .bat from the bin Folder,…
I read somewhere, this wont work, if there are spaces in the file path; is this still the case?